[From the December 1, 1998 The Capital Times.]
By Luke Timmerman
The Capital Times
A federal review has blasted the state's environmental assessment of a four-lane Highway 12 for making sloppy growth projections around the Baraboo Hills.
Argonne National Lab, a Chicago-based consulting lab that analyzes transportation projects, made the review at the request of the Environmental Protection Agency and National Parks Service, which oversees the scenic, 51,000 acre Baraboo Hills area.
Tom Gilbert, who heads the National Park Service's Madison office, said he hoped the Wisconsin Department of Transportation would re-examine its methods and do another environmental impact statement, which could take up to two years.
If the Department of Transportation chooses not to, Gilbers said the U.S. Department of Interior would appeal to a federal mediating body to delay the project.
The 42-page Argonne report was blunt in its criticism of the Transportation Department's methods, and should be enough evidence to keep the project on hold, Gilbert said.
"They (the department) just made an assumption, and said 'Oh, 4 percent growth seems about right,' " Gilbert said. "There is no scientific or solid methodology bases for the predictions in their (environmental statement)."
The Transportation Department defended its 1,200 page environmental statement, and criticized the Argonne report for not offering solutions. The department's original report cost $4 million and took 17 months to complete.
When the report was done in 1996, it projected that 167 acres of development in the Baraboo Hills would occur, with about 28 acres attributable to the expanded highway.
"What this (the Argonne critique) says is that you can't prove what will happen in the future," said Tom Carlsen, transportation department district director. "That's what we have been saying all along."
Carlsen said the report also did not explain what methods the department should have used and doesn't claim the it underestimated the impacts, just that it can't prove them.
The transportation department has consistently predicted that minimal development of the Baraboo Hills would result from a new road. The department estimated the four-lane project from Middleton to Sauk City would cost $64 million in 1996. Environmentalists, and the National Park Service, have advocated building an expanded two-lane highway with passing lanes.
Margaret McEntire, coordinator of the 700-member Save Highway 12 Now Coalition, said she believed the department underestimated the road's effects on the Baraboo Hills. She said her group had been afraid the Argonne report may turn out ambiguous, but added it "doesn't mince words."
The Argonne critique said the transportation department's environmental assessment of how a four-lane U.S. 12 would affect Sauk County is "based solely upon unsupportable and erroneous assumptions."
The report calls the assessment "unacceptable," describing state methods as "inappropriate, methodologically flawed, inconsistently applied, and insufficient."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asked Argonne for the review after environmentalists and others, such as Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, complained that the transportation department did a poor job of assessing whether the road would bring sprawl to Devils Lake and the Baraboo Hills.
Carlsen said Monday his agency remains committed to expanding U.S. 12 to four lanes to reduce congestion and accidents, adding, "We're not giving up."
Neither is the National Park Service. Gilbert said the Department of Interior would take the dispute to the Federal Highway Administration, which would supply between 80 and 90 percent of the project's funding to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
The Council on Environmental Quality, a federal mediating body, could then decide whether federal money should be used for the project, he said.
"It's not us taking on the DOT," Gilbert said. "It's us taking on the FHA. This is a federal issue- that's the level we're dealing with."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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